A new study has found that the human brain is more likely to tell its owner that they’re being stared at – even if they’re not.

To tell if they’re under someone’s gaze, people look at the position of the other person’s eyes and the direction of their heads. These visual cues are then sent to the brain where there are specific areas that compute this information.

But gaze perception - the ability to tell what a person is looking at – is not only a visual cue, but also a social one.

The study shows that when people have limited visual cues, the brain takes over and generates assumptions from past experiences in order to decide whether its owner is being stared at.